When I think of an IT workflow, I conjure a vision of a runbook that contains a number of specific steps to accomplish some critical task. In the realm of Endpoint Device Management, much of the time the result of the execution of these steps results in the creation, observation and analysis of a report in order to make sure that certain cost, quality, performance or compliance metrics are being met.

The sad fact is that these types of activities are likely using the same set of metrics evaluated against the same criteria and performed repeatedly at some regular interval (if the responsible party remembers to perform the task). Nothing demonstrates a waste of productivity more than a highly skilled and compensated IT professional performing routine and repetitive tasks.

Some of the more established IT disciplines such as Network Management and Data Center Operations have for years included the tools to automate these types of mundane but very important workflows. In the Distributed Computing and Endpoint Management world however, this type of automation is harder to come by.

Recently, I have been noticing that it is in the process of being remedied by leading Endpoint Management Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution providers who are gaining favor and are supplying the tool of choice for a large number of enterprise customer deployments. This affords them the opportunity to observe the activities of their customers, determine which high value workflows to automate, automate the workflows and then provide the capability to the entire customer base.

These leading Endpoint Management SaaS providers are using workflow automation to further differentiate their solutions from their enterprise on-premise brethren who typically require significant consulting fees and effort to create and deploy workflow automation, since these capabilities are either not included or not relevant to the tasks. By using Endpoint Management SaaS solutions, the IT administrator can allow the system to work for him to get a view of how their endpoints are performing relative to their criteria by viewing concise and easily accessed dashboards or by utilizing regularly distributed emails containing the information they need.

Proactive notification, alerts, and easily accessible, concise and relevant dashboards are the direction these solutions are taking and it will increase the overall efficiency of Endpoint Device Management.

Something else occurs to me. All this talk of workflow automation has a note of irony…

The best-in-class Endpoint Management Software-as-a-Service companies have gone to great lengths to optimize the appearance and usability of their portals to insure the experience is best in class. As they execute to the new requirements that dictate much more automation that does require a regular login to the portal, does the portal becomes irrelevant to some degree?

Time will tell…